Set the Compression Method to be used when creating a .zip or .zipx file in the appropriate .Zip or .Zipx field, depending on which type of file to which you will be adding files. Please see Choosing a Compression Method for additional information on the compression methods used in WinZip.

Set options for encryption, image resizing, PDF conversions, and watermarking in the Conversion Settings dropdown. Note that these options only affect your added files if they are enabled in the Create/Share or Edit tab. Please see About Encryption for further information about the encryption levels available in WinZip.

Adding files

Once you have configured the desired options, you can add files by clicking From PC or Cloud in the Create/Share or Edit tab. WinZip will open a file selection dialog that you can use to select the files or folders you want to add to your WinZip file. To add files from the cloud, simply select the desired cloud storage provider and provide login information if necessary, then find and select the desired files as usual.

Once you have selected the files and folders to add, click the Add button to begin the zipping process. Alternatively, you can click on the dropdown arrow to the right of the Add button to select one of the other zipping operation:

Add (and replace) files: adds all specified files to the archive.

Freshen existing files: updates files already in the archive that match the specified files. No new files are added.

Move (and replace) files: the same as Add except that files are deleted from disk or moved to the Recycle Bin after they have been added.

Update (and add) files: works the same as Freshen, but adds any specified files that are not already in the archive.

Enhanced deflate: this improved compression method is not part of the Zip 2.0 format, but it provides greater compression and reduces the size of your Zip files.

64-bit extensions: using the extended format, the member file size, Zip file size, and number of member files you can add to a Zip file are limited only by your system's resources. WinZip uses the 64-bit extended format only when the limits of the original format are exceeded. (The original Zip file format limited the number of member files in a Zip file to 65,535 and the maximum size of both the Zip file itself and any member file to 4 gigabytes.)

Beginning with WinZip 12.1, in order to better help users differentiate between Zip files created using legacy Zip 2.0 compatible compression methods and those Zip files created using the advanced compression methods listed above (such as PPMd, bzip2, WavPack, Jpeg compression, LZMA, XZ, and MP3 compression), Zip files created using legacy Zip 2.0 compatible compression methods will have the file extension .zip and Zip files that were created using the advanced compression methods will have the file extension .zipx. Most Zip utilities should be able to extract from the .zip files created by WinZip 12.1 or later; however, .zipx files are not compatible with earlier versions of WinZip and may not be compatible with other Zip utilities. Please see Choosing a Compression Method for additional information on the compression methods used in WinZip.

WinZip remains fully compatible with the original Zip 2.0 file format and uses the original format whenever possible when using Zip 2.0 Legacy compression methods.